A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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Should Only the Little People Pay Taxes? Why is the G.O.P. objectively pro-tax evasion?
The Treasury Department believes that there is a “tax gap,” taxes owed but not paid, of more than $500 billion every year; some estimates put the number much higher. And the Biden administration proposes giving the I.R.S. enough resources to reduce this gap as a way to help pay for investment in America’s future.
Republicans negotiating over a possible infrastructure bill ruled out paying for it in part by giving the Internal Revenue Service more resources to go after tax evasion. If the administration goes this route, it will apparently do so with little if any Republican support.
Just to be clear, I’m not surprised to learn that a significant number of senators are sympathetic to the interests of wealthy tax cheats, that they are objectively pro-tax evasion. I am, however, surprised that they are willing to be so open about their sympathies.
There is, after all, a big difference between arguing for low taxes on the rich and arguing, in effect, that rich people who don’t pay what they legally owe should be allowed to get away with it.
One recent estimate is that more than 20 percent of the income of the top 1 percent goes unreported. Republicans opposing stronger tax enforcement are barely even trying to justify themselves, except by bringing up old, long-debunked claims that the I.R.S. targeted conservative groups. Yet they seem determined to defend the privileges of wealthy tax cheats. Why?
Obviously some big tax cheats are also big political donors. What I’d suggest is that the cheats’ clout within the G.O.P. has actually increased as the party has gotten crazier.
There have always been wealthy Americans who dislike the right’s embrace of racial hostility and culture wars but have been willing to swallow their distaste as long as Republicans keep their taxes low. But as the G.O.P. has become more extreme — as it has become the party of election lies and violent insurrection — who among the wealthy is still willing to make that trade-off?
Some rich Americans have always been right-wing radicals. But as for the rest, the party’s base within the donor class presumably consists increasingly of those among the wealthy with the fewest scruples and the least concern for their reputations — who are precisely the kind of people most likely to engage in blatant tax evasion.
More at https://web.archive.org/web/20210722231206/https://www.nytimes.com/202
1/07/22/opinion/tax-evasion-irs.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Biden understands that in an unregulated market, the first thing successful competitors will do is subvert competition. That’s why, earlier this month, he signed an executive order to tighten enforcement of antitrust laws, facilitate drug importation, require companies to disclose more information for comparison shoppers, and restrict anti-competitive employment, rental, and consumer contracts. The point of the executive order, he explained on Monday, was to promote “fair and open competition … the cornerstone of American capitalism” by helping new businesses take on “giant corporations who have been free to ramp up prices because they haven’t had any real competition.”
More at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/07/biden-capitalism-socialist
-gop.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Should Only the Little People Pay Taxes? Why is the G.O.P. objectively pro-tax evasion?
The Treasury Department believes that there is a “tax gap,” taxes owed but not paid, of more than $500 billion every year; some estimates put the number much higher. And the Biden administration proposes giving the I.R.S. enough resources to reduce this gap as a way to help pay for investment in America’s future.
Republicans negotiating over a possible infrastructure bill ruled out paying for it in part by giving the Internal Revenue Service more resources to go after tax evasion. If the administration goes this route, it will apparently do so with little if any Republican support.
Just to be clear, I’m not surprised to learn that a significant number of senators are sympathetic to the interests of wealthy tax cheats, that they are objectively pro-tax evasion. I am, however, surprised that they are willing to be so open about their sympathies.
There is, after all, a big difference between arguing for low taxes on the rich and arguing, in effect, that rich people who don’t pay what they legally owe should be allowed to get away with it.
One recent estimate is that more than 20 percent of the income of the top 1 percent goes unreported. Republicans opposing stronger tax enforcement are barely even trying to justify themselves, except by bringing up old, long-debunked claims that the I.R.S. targeted conservative groups. Yet they seem determined to defend the privileges of wealthy tax cheats. Why?
Obviously some big tax cheats are also big political donors. What I’d suggest is that the cheats’ clout within the G.O.P. has actually increased as the party has gotten crazier.
There have always been wealthy Americans who dislike the right’s embrace of racial hostility and culture wars but have been willing to swallow their distaste as long as Republicans keep their taxes low. But as the G.O.P. has become more extreme — as it has become the party of election lies and violent insurrection — who among the wealthy is still willing to make that trade-off?
Some rich Americans have always been right-wing radicals. But as for the rest, the party’s base within the donor class presumably consists increasingly of those among the wealthy with the fewest scruples and the least concern for their reputations — who are precisely the kind of people most likely to engage in blatant tax evasion.
More at https://web.archive.org/web/20210722231206/https://www.nytimes.com/202
1/07/22/opinion/tax-evasion-irs.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
If any of this were true, you wouldn't see every big corporation blowing the Democratic Party and spewing their poisonous "Progressive" ideology all over the internet.
The Democrat Party is the Party of the rich people.
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Biden understands that in an unregulated market, the first thing successful competitors will do is subvert competition. That’s why, earlier this month, he signed an executive order to tighten enforcement of antitrust laws, facilitate drug importation, require companies to disclose more information for comparison shoppers, and restrict anti-competitive employment, rental, and consumer contracts. The point of the executive order, he explained on Monday, was to promote “fair and open competition … the cornerstone of American capitalism” by helping new businesses take on “giant corporations who have been free to ramp up prices because they haven’t had any real competition.”
More at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/07/biden-capitalism-socialist
-gop.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Talk to me when they break up Google.
P.S. Joe Biden* doesn't even know who Joe Biden* is.
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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Quote:6ix, you lost touch with reality long time ago.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
If any of this were true, you wouldn't see every big corporation blowing the Democratic Party and spewing their poisonous "Progressive" ideology all over the internet.
The Democrat Party is the Party of the rich people.
It would be an understatement to call Steve Weinberg “left-of-center.” He believed in higher taxes on rich people like himself to service a robust social safety net. When Trump won, Steve remarked to me that most of the disgusting and outrageous things Trump would do could be reversed in a generation or so — but not the aggressive climate change denial; that actually could matter on the scale of centuries. Steve made the news in Austin for openly defying the Texas law forcing public universities to allow concealed carry on campus: he said that, regardless of what the law said, firearms would not be welcome in his classrooms. (Louise, Steve’s wife for 67 years and a professor at UT Austin’s law school, also wrote perhaps the definitive scholarly takedown of the shameful Bush vs. Gore Supreme Court decision, which installed George W. Bush as president.)
https://law.utexas.edu/faculty/publications/2002-When-Courts-Decide-El
ections-The-Constitutionality-of-Bush-v-Gore
https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=5566
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Dan Price @DanPriceSeattle
Want to cut taxes for regular people? I have a simple idea.
Every year the rich owe $554 billion in taxes they illegally never pay.
If we just enforced IRS laws to collect that money, we could cut every taxpayer's tax bill by $3,800 a year.
Why does the GOP oppose this?
1:53 PM · Jul 23, 2021·Twitter Web App
https://twitter.com/DanPriceSeattle/status/1418645337221124098
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ix, you lost touch with reality long time ago.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
If any of this were true, you wouldn't see every big corporation blowing the Democratic Party and spewing their poisonous "Progressive" ideology all over the internet.
The Democrat Party is the Party of the rich people.
I wholly reject that assessment coming from you.
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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Quote:The millions of Trumptards in America should follow your example and stay home from work to show that business can't continue without them. Trumptards will discover that is not true. Business does continue without them.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:I wholly reject that assessment coming from you.
Originally posted by second:
6ix, you lost touch with reality long time ago.
The latest Firefly comic illustrates that particularly well using old Browncoats.
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=20&tid=62603&mid=11378
04#1137804
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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You're using a comic to address reality?
Oh, the irony.
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Quote:Have you never seen anyone feeling defeated and then getting drunk? Or seen a death that leaves a wife alone to raise the children? Then look to the Firefly comics and see both dramatic situations on a single page!
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
You're using a comic to address reality?
Oh, the irony.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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